Local developer Chris Kruger of Kruger Heavy Industries has been working with Data Realms on Cortex Command, since 2008. It’s finally hit release, and is available on Steam, or for direct purchase from Data Realms. Chris worked initially on the Macintosh versions, general bug fixing and coding, helped out on the Linux version and more recently orchestrated its release on Steam.

LMG End of Year Party Shout-outs and Celebrations
Thanks to all of the people that have backed the Pozible campaign for the Let’s Make Games End of Year Party. We have reached our pledged goal, with still a week to go.

A special thank you to the following awesome people:

Saxon Druce

Simon Boxer

John Chillemi

Garry Carrol

Melynda Sheldon

Kat Black

Tim Oliver

Richard Kong

Vicky Sweet

Samuel Thomas

Gnomic Studios

Jetha Chan

Just a reminder again to RSVP to the Facebook event, and that the date is on the 18th of November, at 3pm. Don’t miss it!

Over the last few years, we’ve heard a lot of people express surprise when they learn about the local game development community:

There are game developers in Perth? Really?
That game was developed here?

As a community, it can be pretty disheartening to feel so invisible. Shipping a game is a huge achievement that should be recognised, and our local game developers should be celebrated like the stars they are!

That why Let’s Make Games maintains an directory of local game developers and keeps a record of locally developed games. If you haven’t yet seen our Games and Developers pages, check them out (and send us a profile if something is missing!).

Thanks to the developers for sending through profiles and bringing their game releases to our attention. As we’re purely volunteer-run, it sometimes takes a while before profiles appear online, so please be patient if you send one through (it will appear on the site eventually!)

This bring our total listings to 27 games and 17 developers. Not too shabby for an apparently small industry!

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Note: Our next event isn’t going to be for a few months, so we’ve decided to post more local news articles to the website. Please contact us with any local news or press releases concerning the Perth game development community!

We’re such big fans of our iParty 2.0 sponsors that we sleep with the following image under our collective pillow:

iParty 2.0 wouldn’t be possible without the kind support of our sponsors. When we put the call out a few weeks ago, we didn’t know what sort of response to expect. We’re incredibly appreciative and humbled by the level of sponsorship offered by the following local organisations, companies, and individuals:

Different Methods: Apparently Simon is not content with just organising local and globalGame Jams, hosting and maintaining Planet PIGMI, and undertaking some of the most amazing games-related work in Perth. He’s also come on as our biggest sponsor, making us feel all warm and fuzzy with his support.

Innovation Centre: Always keen to lend a hand to local industry groups (such as ours!) the Innovation Centre kindly offered the use of their fantastic professional events venue. Our drinks will be kept cool in their fridges and our work will be displayed on their projector and plasma screen. It’s great!

Subversive Games: Subversive creates training games and advergames for the rapidly expanding serious games market. One of a handful of larger professional games companies with a studio in Perth, Subversive Games continues to show it’s strong support for the local scene.

Rockethands: If the group shot on their website is anything to go by, Rockethands are the coolest game developers in Perth… ever. You can tell that they keep it real, and evidently put their money where their mouths are. We know that money can be hard to come by for indie developers and it means a lot to us that you guys have sent some our way!

Black Lab Games: The latest game development initiative by one of Perth’s veteran game developers (Paul started his first games company back in 1992!) Paul has an infectious passion for games and independent development, which he shares with others as a founding committee member of IGDA Perth Chapter.

Reveries Virtual World: Avril is obviously a real trend-setter, jumping right in as our first financial sponsor. Reveries has all of us at Let’s Make Games very excited with anticipation. Thanks for being so forthcoming in supporting our community events Avril!

With all this support iParty 2.0 is shaping up to be the best night of the year for local game developers. If you haven’t yet RSVP’d, please do so using the contact page or by registering for the event on Facebook. It’s a free event with food and drinks provided (thanks to our awesome sponsors!).

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You may have noticed the visual overhaul of the Let’s Make Games website. Hopefully it comes across as a lot brighter and a bit more professional.

Aside from new visuals, we’ve been working to improve site content. We’ve created an Events page, updated content on the About page, and added a whole bunch of links (which should appear on the right-most column).

Please take a few minutes to check out the links section and let us know if there are any other sites that should be included. Chiefly, we want to ensure that our list of local game developers is as comprehensive as possible!

If you are a local developer, please contact us so that we can include a brief (company, group, or individual) bio in our upcoming report.

The report contains a summary of results from the recent industry survey (conducted in early March 2009), and details a number of practical directives that we will be pursuing to help ensure sustainability and growth of the local games industry.

We hope that you find the report interesting, that it provides some insight into the current state of the Perth games industry, and that it highlights some issues that must be addressed if we are to capitalise on local talent.

Please feel free to leave comments here, and to send detailed feedback via the contact form. We would especially like to hear from you if you are in the Perth games industry, but did not participate in the survey. We will be announcing a mixer event within the next few days and encourage everyone to attend!

Finally, we’d like to express our deep appreciation to Jack Casey for the feature image on the front cover and to Paul Turbett from Black Lab Games for the foreword.

Update: Fixed a few links in the report. Thanks to Josh Stewart for reporting these errors.Update: Corrected graph and grammar in Current Involvement section. Thanks to Simon Boxer for reporting these errors.